Milton in America

Ackroyd explores Milton's complicated and contradictory character by speculating about what might have happened had he fled to America in 1660 and become the spiritual and temporal leader of a Puritan settlement. It's more of a satire of seventeenth-century religious certainty and the intolerance it led to than a serious attempt to describe the Puritan endeavour, but if you read it on that level and accept its one-sided view, it's quite an engaging read, and often rather funny in a bleak, Monrty Python sort of way.

En 1660, John Milton débarque sur le continent américain, terre encore vierge des turpitudes de la monarchie qui l'ont chassé, lui, le célèbre poète aveugle, de la Vieille Angleterre. À son arrivée, des Puritains, prudes commères et rigides travailleurs, le supplient de se mettre à la tête de leur communauté. C'est pour un intellectuel l'occasion rêvée de créer de toutes pièces la société républicaine et chaste qu'il vantait dans ses pamphlets. Décence et labeur sont les piliers de son œuvre, jusqu'au jour où s'installent de l'autre côté de la rivière une bande de catholiques qui narguent les austères Puritains de leurs chants, de leurs danses, de leur intolérable joie de vivre. John Milton comprend que le show more Serpent tentateur vient de s'introduire dans son paradis. show less

Milton in America (Nan A. Talese, 1997) is Peter Ackroyd's flight of fancy about what might have happened had John Milton opted to leave England at the time of the Restoration and decamp to Puritan America. Told alternately from the perspectives of the blind Milton himself and his companion and guide Goosequill (in both flashbacks and straight narrative, and including transcripts of Milton's missives to an English friend), this novel imagines Milton becoming a sort of Puritanical dictator, enforcing strictures of religion and conduct on the settlers (who are, at first, entirely overawed by Milton's presence and happy to do as he says ... for a while).

There were interesting tidbits of historical material thrown in here and there (but not show more in any systematic way, and usually greatly disguised), but mostly this is Ackroyd musing, creating his own Paradise Lost and putting Milton right in the center of it. He's captured quite well the tensions between English settlers of different religious perspectives and the original inhabitants of the area.

The narrative thread was sometimes rather difficult to keep hold of, and frankly I thought the idea of this book somewhat better than how it ended up being carried off. Nonetheless, a worthy premise, and certainly it's fascinating to think about how things might have gone had Milton in fact crossed the Atlantic and made a new home on this side of the pond.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-review-milton-in-america.html show less

I often enjoy Ackroyd's novels, but this book is largely a disappointment. Ackroyd's intriguing conceit, that Milton flees to America to escape persecution with the coming of the Restoration leads to little that might not have been achieved in other ways. The place of the character of Milton, who is served by a comic sidekick called Goosequill, could just as well have been taken by any other strong-willed fanatically bigoted American settler (and there were plenty of those). The working of the plot - a dramatic shipwreck in which (mirabile dictu) only Milton and Goosequill survive, a strange magical realistic episode in which Milton is rescued by Indians and temporarily has his sight restored and has sex with a Native American woman, show more Goosequill's mastery of Native American languages after a few informal lessons with a friend - strain credulity without much additional dramatic (or comic) punch. The historical pastiche is disappointing - the sections told from Milton's point of view in letters to a friend, do not sound remotely like anything he might have written. It's hard to know whether this is a jeu d'esprit that got inflated out of control, or serious effort at counter-realist history that never quite takes hold. show less

A curious what if story: the premise of this book is that John Milton runs from the King's return and turns up in the newly discovered America.
Milton's puritanical Christianity causes problems from day one and the tale builds to a war with the next settlement, a Catholic group who raise their leader to the level of king. New Milton, our eponymous hero's township wins a pyrrhic victory over Ralph Kempis (King of Mary Mount - and surely, history's only King Ralph!) .
Milton is not given the pleasure of his victory as he is tricked into an alcohol induced night of sin, after which, he staggers off into the woods, trips and loses the sight which had returned at the hands of an Indian healer.
I found the concept more entertaining than its show more inception: I was not sorry to reach the final full stop. show less

I enjoy Peter Ackroyd's prose and have been a fan since "Hawksmoor", his very chilling possession story. Milton is not his best book, but an interesting exploration of his view of the American character. which seems to be rather autistic. Readable but not captivating.